


Bewilderment

by alutea



Series: Infinite Jest: Third Time Will Be the Charm, Maybe [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Essays, Infinite Jest - Freeform, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:02:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27285370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alutea/pseuds/alutea
Summary: This is not an auspicious beginning.
Relationships: David Foster Wallace's brilliant mind/Reader
Series: Infinite Jest: Third Time Will Be the Charm, Maybe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1991284





	Bewilderment

Chapter 1 - Year of Glad

 _Infinite Jest_ , the book version, is apparently 1,079 pages. People talk about being daunted by its doorstop size. Hah. I come from _Harry Potter_ stock. Oh wait, _Goblet of Fire_ is only 734 pages (hardback). We'll toss in _Order of the Phoenix_ and a bit of _Half-Blood Prince_ too, then.

I have the eBook version. I'm clutching my head by 6%-read. Erg. People also talk about needing two bookmarks, tabs, a pile of post-its, and a dictionary to get through it. Double erg. Well, I have technology on my side. Let's try this again (x2). I'll go slower this time. Maybe.

We open on Harold Incandenza, Hal, trying to (fake?) his way through a college admissions interview with three Deans of the University of Arizona. Free-association: I have a colleague named Harold. I call him Harold. Everyone I know calls him Harold. He's never asked us to call him anything else. I've never seen Hal used as a nickname for Harold before, only for Henry. Either of those makes about as much sense to me as "Bill" for "William," though at least Harold actually contains the letters H-A-L.

Free-association: [the college admissions scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_bribery_scandal), obv. I think tennis was one of the sports represented there, too. Except that it seems Hal is actually pretty good at tennis, and these men (the Deans and everybody in the room, all men) are there to do their due diligence.

Having read DFW's essays, I know about his passion for tennis (he was a ranked junior player in his state, if I recall correctly). It feels a little odd to me that he of all people would start this book by cleaving so closely to the writer's creed "write what you know." Or maybe that's a niggling sense of discomfort talking, because of Hal's in-your-face internal descriptive and analytical aptitude despite "verbal scores that are just quite a bit closer to zero than we [the Deans]'re comfortable with" and because I already know too much about Hal. Hal cuts a bit too close to the bone.

On this third read-through, I'm realizing that maybe I'm _supposed_ to be as bewildered as I mostly still am. There are eight people in the room (eight, I'm now pretty sure), including our protagonist and his Uncle Charles. The suspicion about purposeful bewilderment-making is supported by the fact that "Uncle Charles" becomes "C.T." without any lead-in for the reader. I'm guessing this is frowned-upon in mass-entertainment fiction, where authors mostly lead their readers around very carefully lest they (and their future entertainment dollars / kudos, the fandom equivalent) get lost along the way.

So:

  * Dean of Admissions, aka yellow Dean
  * Dean of Academic Affairs, Dean Sawyer
  * Dean of Athletic Affairs, Bill
  * Director of Composition
  * varsity tennis Coach Kirk White
  * Academy prorector Mr. Aubrey F. deLint
  * Uncle Charles, aka C.T., aka Dr. Travis, aka Chuck
  * Harold Incandenza, Hal



One signature quality of DFW's writing is sometimes startlingly beauty in the midst of prosaic detail that (intentionally, I'm sure) overloads your senses, like "the spidered light of an Arizona noon" against a conference table. Stuff I want very badly to steal, but are so Wallacerian that I'm afraid people will point it out immediately and be like "You stole that from DFW." Guilty as charged.

And then there is the deliberate break of the rhythm of words to jar your brain, "Here is something different—pay attention." This makes so much more sense to me now after reading Zadie Smith's essay (cited in previous post). It's annoying to me as a reader, which means it's a risk for the author, which means it's something that takes courage to do. I don't have that courage, and it is wondrous to follow someone at work who does.

"I am in here."

At first I take it as an irritatingly obvious statement of fact used to establish character. Then, as I learn more about Hal, those simple words start to gain urgency and poignancy. When it's repeated later, it gains horror. Then I think about DFW's passion for language and Wittgensteinian questions about connection and the limits of language and the limits that language places on our views of reality, and I'm overwhelmed again.

Tangential _CMBYN_ aside: I always felt it was weird that Oliver claimed he learned about the etymology of "apricot" in Philosophy 101. Isn't that the purview of Linguistics? Maybe philosophy's preoccupation with language as exemplified by Wittgenstein explains it. We'll, uh, leave the etymology of "apricock" for something non-essay.

...So did I get the subtext right that the aggressive, "way more effeminate than he'd seemed at first" Director of Composition is being coded as gay or queer? Hmm. Reserving judgment until I know more, if he ever appears again, though the imagery of disgust is concerning.

"I think of John N. R. Wayne, who would have won this year's WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father's head."—This sentence is interesting now that I know Don Gately is another character. The first time around, I thought it was a metaphor. ...A clown mask?

...And the sponsorships are still absurd. Which is, I gather, pretty much what DFW thought of the real-world counterpart. In one of his tennis essays he calls attention to the fact that some athletes wear mismatching bands from different companies, one on each arm, in order to earn more from sponsorships. I wonder if the arms have different rates. (He didn't mention.)

What is a Director of Composition's role in a university, anyway? Something ~= to the head of the English Department...? Creative writing (which of course DFW would know intimately)?

I'm still pondering the "(sic)" Hal places after "O. says he can only remember." It's not a grammatical error, so—a logical one? Because we never "only remember" anything? Because memories are interlacing associations, and this colors our world-views to a degree perhaps no one is fully conscious of?

Here's a practical example. The University of Michigan [conducted a study](https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2010/10/14/a7877/) in which some of portion of 87 student participants were induced to lie either through voicemail or email. The ones who lied through voicemail later displayed a greater preference for mouthwash (rating on desirability and willingness to pay), while the ones who lied through email displayed same for hand sanitizer. The portion of students that were not induced to lie did not display a preference for either.

In psychology this is known as "priming;" the association between lying and dirtiness "primed" the subject to be more receptive to a cleaning product targeting the affected body part by evoking a third association between the urge to get clean and the means to get clean.

If that doesn't give you the heebie-jeebies...

How deeply are we going down the rabbit hole?

Stuff DFW is making me look up:

  * Director of Composition - it's not a thing, as far as I can tell.
  * Enfield, Massachusetts was a real town but no longer exists.
  * Remington - American firearms manufacturer whose company was a major munitions supplier to the US government and under his son Philo (1816-1889) an important manufacturer of sewing machines and typewriters.
  * prorector - a substitute, or assistant, university rector [rector - the principal of certain schools, colleges, and universities.] *Ugh, don't you hate these recursive definitions?
  * wen [n] A harmless cyst, especially on the scalp or face, containing the fatty secretion of a sebaceous gland. / (Letters of the Alphabet (Foreign)) a rune having the sound of Modern English w. *I don't know where to place this on the scale of "dammit, it's a three-letter word I don't know!" and "why the hell would I ever want to know this?"
  * Kekuléan [Kekulé] - German chemist remembered for his discovery of the ring structure of benzene
  * lapidary [n] - One who cuts, polishes, or engraves gems. / Marked by conciseness, precision, or refinement of expression
  * effete [adj] - Characterized by extreme refinement or self-indulgence, often to the point of unworldiness or decadence / Depleted of vitality, force, or effectiveness; exhausted / Effeminate / No longer productive; infertile.
  * mimetic [adj] - Of or relating to an imitation; imitative. / Using imitative means of representation
  * presbyopic [adj] - Inability of the eye to focus sharply on nearby objects, resulting from loss of elasticity of the crystalline lens with advancing age.
  * half nelson - A wrestling hold in which one arm is passed under the opponent's arm from behind to the back of the neck.
  * enfilade - Gunfire directed along the length of a target, such as a column of troops. / A target vulnerable to sweeping gunfire. / (Architecture) A linear arrangement of a series of interior doors, as to a suite of rooms, so as to provide an unobstructed view when the doors are open.
  * martinet - A rigid military disciplinarian. / One who demands absolute adherence to forms and rules.
  * etiology - The study of causes or origins. / The branch of medicine that deals with the causes or origins of disease. / Assignment of a cause, an origin, or a reason for something. / The cause or origin of a disease or disorder as determined by medical diagnosis.
  * RICO - Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970



Okay, look, I'm not invested in the book enough yet to look up the rest. Try me again later.

  * Montague grammar
  * Quadrivium-Trivium
  * Brewster's-Angle
  * Kierkegaard
  * Camus
  * Dennis Gabor
  * Hegel
  * Nunn Bush
  * hypophalangial
  * Cosgrove Watt




End file.
